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MARATHON TIME TO GET THINGS DONE We had a list of things to get done while we were in Marathon. Another little Front was coming through in the next few days so it would be good timing. The weather report is predicting the winds will switch to the South East in about a week with the seas settling down and then the conditions will be right to head north into the Gulf of Mexico, to Everglades City. So we had plenty of time to get things done. First we needed a rental car so Larry could drive to Palm Beach to have his eye checked. NO FLIGHTS OUT OR IN Larry did check into flights from the nearby Marathon Airport but there are only three flights a week out of Marathon and they only go to Fort Myers. Yep, there are no other flights to anywhere and the guy at the airport said even that was ending at the end of the month. So at the end of the month only personal air craft will be flying in and out of Marathon. Wow, guess you are stuck around here. NO MORE ALARMS
Next on the list was to get the fuel problem resolved. Larry got someone out right away and they polished both tanks. We think we are completely free of water and algae now. No more alarms, please. FILL THE TANKS Third on the list was to get the tanks filled with fuel. No problem, the guy that polished the fuel recommended a service that brings the diesel fuel truck right to the dock and fills the tanks in your slip. That sure was great as I wasn’t looking forward to another docking to get fuel.
WHETHER YOU WANT IT OR NOT Then, pump the tank. That wasn’t a problem as everybody gets their tanks pumped here, much like taking a bath once a week whether you want it or not. The charge is only $5 so how could anybody complain? I guess you could refuse but then it would be pretty obvious what you might be doing. Anyway, the pump out guy just makes the rounds on Friday and goes from boat to boat and pumps the tanks. Got to say, Fridays are pretty smelly around here. I think they do the same in the mooring field because when Ziggy and I were kayaking we saw a pump out boat going from boat to boat.
BOY, A GOOD BACK SCRATCH SURE FEELS GOOD Speaking of kayaking, Zig and I kayaked the whole area and guess what? We finally found a Manatee!!!! Photo taken by Ralph Bryan ( La Jolla,CA) Remember all those No Wake Manatee Zones??? All those 100’s of miles of going slow for the Manatees and never seeing a one??? Well, all three of them are here. Zig and I kayaked with them. And guess what? They like to have their backs scratched. It was so funny. We noticed this boater was scrubbing something in the water with her boat brush and then figured out it was a manatee. It was rolling over to get all sides scratched and loving every minute of it. I guess this woman was cleaning her boat and the manatee kept getting in the way of the brush begging for a back scratch. It followed her all around her boat. Once she started scratching him, it was impossible to get any work done as he insisted on more and would just follow her around the boat getting in the way of the brush. One day at the dock they came right by the boat. They are as long as the beam of the boat and almost as wide. You just can’t believe it when you see one go by. Ziggy can even smell them ahead of time. You can tell they are coming when he puts his nose to the air and starts sniffing and acts a little scared. He doesn’t know what to think of them and just watches them with great care. There’s no funny business of barking loudly at them as Zig doesn’t think it’s a good idea to draw attention to himself. He says they are too big.
UN FAIR Ziggy thought this place
was a little un fair. He didn’t like the idea that cruisers cats wandered
freely on the docks and even on other people’s boats. The first morning
we think one of them pee’d on our railing next to Ziggy’s crate. By the
end of the day though, Ziggy had resolved that problem. He waited
patiently all day until he eyed one of them strutting down the dock and
then before you could do anything, he flew off the boat chasing it down a
couple of slips and right into the water. PS… the cat survived, He swam to the nearest piling and crawled up on the top and gave Ziggy a dirty look.
FUNK ZONE Speaking of “checking in,” this place is a total funk zone. The Sombrero Dockside Marina office is located right smack dab in the bar. In fact the marina office counter is part of the bar counter. That explained a few things to me about the confusion the day we came in. There’s a huge U shaped bar and I can honestly say that at any time of day you can be guaranteed to see at least someone belting a few away. The dock path goes right through the bar and restaurant. So, you have to walk right through the bar carrying your dirty laundry when heading to the laundry “room”. Did I say room? It’s at the end of the bar on the outside in a lean to shed. I decided not to check out the restroom or shower. I didn’t need to as I got the picture. We were very glad we had a good slip far down from the bar as the noise at night would have been irritating. I can understand why as one hot afternoon about 4:00 we decided to stop for a margarita. It was “Happy Hour” and the drinks were only $2.50 and strong as all get out. This place was the cruisers hangout though and the bar is a popular place for them all to meet. I get the feeling that most of the boaters, once they get to Marathon, just stop cruising and hang out here. Several start to look ragged around the edges but we’re all in the same boat. I think they just don’t notice how bad each other is starting to look and most don’t care. In a way, it reminded me of Panama Yacht Club in Colon, Panama. The people had the same look but these people weren’t desperate to get out of here and didn’t have that fearful look in their eyes. We drove daily to a little nearby beach park and let Ziggy swim and walk on the beach. It was a nice beach and the water and sky had those beautiful colors that you see in the Bahamas but in the Bahamas you have the beach to yourself and Ziggy can run free. Here you have to remember the rules and abide by them.
SMOKIN’ I have to say that during our stay it’s hard not to become intimate with your neighbors and sadly if one of the neighbors smokes, you will too, whether or not you’ve taken up smoking. You just couldn’t escape the smoke, night and day, every few minutes and the wind was blowing from their direction it blew right in our boat, all the time, day and night. It was so bad sometimes that you wondered if it wouldn’t be a good idea to offer non-smoking slips. Too bad, because they were very nice people but no way could we get used to that.
EVERYBODY NEEDS QUIET TIME AND PRIVACY Also, when cruising you just need your privacy and quiet time and there was none of that living in the slip next to these people. You couldn’t go out on the back of the boat to sit without breathing in smoke and getting asked questions, roped into a conversation. I can’t even tolerate having guests on the boat without private time let alone people that I don’t even know. I spent a lot of time in the salon because of it as I had no other place to get some rest, peace and quiet. I kind of think the couple on the other side of us felt the same way as one day they turned their boat around and docked in the opposite direction so they could sit in private facing the mangroves. That didn’t help though because these people just went on the bow of their boat and yelled at them having a conversation over our boat. There was no escape. When Larry left for Palm Beach I decided to wash the boat that afternoon. The boat was getting filthy from the road. Each time a car went by or pulled up to park it would stir up a cloud of dirt that blew into and onto the boat. Also, we had the blow and go guys across the street at the golf course. They were constantly, blowing, mowing and trimming and if the wind again was blowing your way you got brunt of the incessant noise and the dirt. Anyway, it was the first time I went out on the boat and of course got caught and was invited over for dinner to the boat next door. I declined but said I’d bring a glass of wine and sit for a drink once I finished washing the boat. After all, I didn’t dislike these people, I really liked them, it was just that you couldn’t let down your guard or your privacy and quiet time was gone for good. The couple on the other side of us had been invited also and I could tell maybe wished not to come as at first they said they were busy and then the guy said he had to watch the races on TV. But these French are persistent and friendly and you just can’t say no. WHY WASH YOUR BOAT? As time went on, I guess the French woman was getting anxious with me for not coming over right away, but I was washing the boat when I was invited so had to finish. She finally came out and asked when I was going to be done and she didn’t understand why anyone would wash their boat when they know they are just going to get it salty again. THE TRUTHS BE TOLD OR INFLATED? Anyway, by the time I got over there, they were all a bit snockered and the truths were coming out. For one, the French people who had talked all week like they were experienced boaters let the cat out of the bag. It turns out they had just bought this boat and “everything” was wrong with it. They were going to make the manufacturer take it back and now were going to by a Nordhavn. I asked if they really should buy another boat until they are sure they can sell this boat, especially in this economy. “That’s not my problem!” he said. “What do you mean?” I asked. “We told them what kind of cruising we wanted to do when we bought the boat and this doesn’t do it.” It sure looked like a fine boat to me that could do everything they were doing. I just didn’t understand. I asked what kind of cruising did they want to do but never got a clear answer. They were convinced that the manufacturer would just take the boat back and give them their money back. Maybe they think Obama will help them. I thought it was a bit unrealistic especially after you’ve cruised it all the way here from Montreal. I think he’s in for a big surprise. That’s when the real cat got out of the bag. She let it slip that they had hired a captain to bring them all the way from Montreal to Fort Lauderdale and he did it in 16 days. And the captain was “a horrible drunk” she said. They said the captain left them in Fort Lauderdale and they then took the boat to an anchorage, called “No Name Bay” in Key Biscayne then in another day brought it down the ICW all the way to Marathon and grounded the boat here as they came in the harbor! Now, that was big news to me after sitting by them for a week listening to their stories of how they brought the boat from Montreal and other things that made you think they were experienced boaters. I just couldn’t believe it! I actually made her repeat it again to make sure I heard it right. I asked if they had any other boating experience before this boat and she said no, that they just had a little Sea Ray boat but he then added that they have taken very good classes and know all they need to know and more than most boaters.
NEVER FAILS Now this is the perfect example of boaters that we sometimes meet that talk a big talk but then you find out haven’t done the big walk and everything is inflated and overrated. All this week they were putting on that they were the big boaters and now it turns out quite different. I made a few comments that I thought were funny about the difficulty of docking in these finger pole slips and that’s when I was told that the dock master had been “drunk” the day we came in. Then the other guy started spouting his docking skills saying that he tells his wife, “Never, NEVER, throw the lines to anyone on the dock. Always wait and hand them to the people standing there because if I can’t get the boat right in and up to the dock then I’m not doing my job right.” Okay, now I feel like an idiot as half the time I throw the lines to the dock person. Well, I thought that’s a pretty remarkable statement. He must be really good is all I can think. Then the next day they left to go fishing and you never saw such a mess of tangled lines on their deck. It took her forever to get the mass of spaghetti untangled from their cleats and then in a wad hung on a hook on the finger pole to pick up when they came back in. It was just going to be one more tangled mess to deal with on the return docking. Anyway, you get the picture. It has always amazed me ever since we started boating the people you meet that inflate and brag about their prowess at boating. They’ve got egos bigger than the size of the manatee Ziggy saw. At first when I hear stories like this I wonder what we’re doing wrong. Why do we still get nervous about things, why we worry and are we overly careful? Why do we still sometimes have those bad days docking? Why do we never feel quite sure of the weather report and how the seas will be? How did I really swallow that these people just getting a boat had come all the way from Montreal to Marathon and act like they were seasoned boaters when they are not? How did I believe that this other guy can come into any dock smooth as silk each time and then you see it’s not smooth but tangled? You start to doubt yourself hearing their grand stories and then you find out it’s just another inflated story. Sorry to say this as these people were all very nice but why do some boaters have this ego problem? Why do they feel they have to say these things? Can’t we all admit that we get scared or don’t know it all?
LET’S GO! I’m embarrassed to say, I was very glad it was time to go. I don’t like being stuck at a dock with no place to go and no privacy and this was becoming that. I was excited to be going to the Everglades to see what that would be like. If I want to be stuck at a dock I’ll get a condo. The weather was right and we were heading out in the morning at eight. The French said they were heading out at 8:00 also. They were supposed to leave today too but they didn’t so we’ll see about tomorrow. Hey you can’t all get along but when you are in tight quarters like that for days on end, you do need some privacy, down time, and definitely have the right to fresh air.
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Zig never could understand why
these damn cats could run around free as a bird and he had to be on
leash. He didn’t like them one bit. 
